API Reference

A Cordova plugin bridges a bit of functionality between the WebView
powering a Cordova application and the native platform the Cordova
application is running on. Plugins are composed of a single JavaScript
interface used across all platforms, and native implementations
following platform-specific Plugin interfaces that the JavaScript
calls into. All of the core Cordova APIs are implemented using this
architecture.

This guide steps the process of writing a simple Echo Plugin that
passes a string from JavaScript and sends it into the native
environment for the supported platforms. The native code then returns
the same string back to the callbacks inside the plugin's JavaScript.

This guide provides enough overview on which you can build to write
more complex plugins.

The entry point for any plugin is JavaScript. The reason developers use
Cordova is so they can use and write JavaScript, not Objective-C,
not Java, not C#. The JavaScript interface for your plugin is the
front-facing and arguably most important part of your Cordova plugin.

You can structure your plugin's JavaScript however you like. The one
thing you must use to communicate between the Cordova JavaScript
and native environments is the cordova.exec function. Here is an example:

function(error) {}: Error function callback. If the operation does
not complete successfully, this function is invoked (optionally with
an error parameter).

"service": The service name to call into on the native side. This
is mapped to a native class, about which more information is
available in the native guides listed below.

"action": The action name to call into. This is picked up by the
native class receiving the exec call, and, depending on the
platform, essentially maps to a class's method. The native guides
listed below provide details.

First, let's take a look at the last three arguments to the exec
function. We will be calling the Echo "service", requesting the echo
"action", and passing an array of arguments containing the echo string,
which is the first parameter into the window.echo function.

The success callback passed into exec is simply a reference to the
callback function that window.echo takes. We do a bit more for the
error callback: if the native side fires off the error callback, we
simply invoke the success callback and pass into it a "default"
string.

Cordova has a plugin specification available to enable automated
installation of the plugin for Android, iOS, BlackBerry 10 and Windows
Phone platforms. By structuring your plugin in a particular way and
adding a plugin.xml manifest file, you can enable users to install
your plugin via the command-line tooling.

Once you define JavaScript for your plugin, you need to complement it
with at least one native implementation. Details to do so for each
platform are listed below. These guides continue to build on the
simple Echo Plugin example discussed above.